Boys will be boys

Arthur, resident expert on the local area, took Hannah and Ethan (and their hanger-on parents) out to the Lochside for a lesson in bushcraft.

We found sorrel, wood sorrel and tasted them; sorrel has a lemony taste and wood sorrel tastes like Bramley apple.  We learned how to grasp a nettle without it stinging (although we have yet to do this successfully) and learned that they can be eaten too.  We were taught how to use a rush to make a wick for a lamp as well as how to make a simple shelter and start a fire.  We used a fire steel and beech bark but also saw the method that relies on friction generated between two pieces of wood.

Once the lesson was over we made our way back to Tigh Mor, our temporary home.

Ethan had been behaving for a whole hour and, once the lesson was over, he decided to go a little mad.  He ran through some tall grass that, in places, was taller than him.

We were all heading back to the house and we had lost Ethan; we simply couldn't see him in the grass.  As I called to him to tell him we would head back without him, he emerged from the grass.  He didn't look good.

His arms had been scratched and stung and, in all of these places, his arm had local swelling that looked like an allergic reaction.  I looked at his eyes and they were watering and he was sneezing profusely.

Ethan suffers from hay fever and had just done the most stupid thing a hay fever sufferer could do, deliberately agitate grass and get as close to it as possible.

We gave him a hay fever tablet, a good talking to, a shower and tucked him up in bed.  When he woke up the next morning he couldn't open his eyes and his face was still swollen.  I think he might have learned his lesson but maybe not.  He is a boy after all.